Tag: narrative

For the writers, for the artists, for the lovers… how do you face the blank page? How do you reach effortlessly into the pit of desire and pull forth on the joy of creation? How do you start each day? For the struggle to start is very real… let us face it.

I once heard a writer – I forget who – comment that there is an endless possibility of success if we never finish a work, and – for my mind – this is doubly so if we never start. If we never start we never have to face our own inadequacies, our own deficiencies and desires.

If we never start, then we never have to fail.

And so, each day we wake, we prepare, we sit – and there we find ourselves at the precipice of a moment. Some days we are lucky and step forward without thinking, and we are off, stumbling forth as best we are able, as best as our craft allows. And then other days – at that edge – something else happens.

The Dream: that anyone can be wealthy and successful by virtue of hard work and sacrifice with little or no assistance.

Today feels like one of those days. Mr Trump has been elected President of the US. It matters because of the kind of campaign he has run. There were two key characteristics: a complete lack of shame and a willingness to pander to whomever to get into power.

This resulted in a misogynistic caricature of a man who promised a return to the glory days of US hegemonic power, and implicitly aligned that with the patriarchy of which he was self anointed head. It was a campaign in which he was willing to attack and blame everyone except his own kind. A campaign which was the culmination of a relentlessly forged narrative of success, of the self-made man, of the personification of the American Dream. Continue reading “Trump and the American Dream”